BLOOMINGTON — Indiana women’s basketball‘s roller coaster season continued at Assembly Hall with a 78-53 win over Maine on Sunday.
The Hoosiers (5-3) were coming off a 30-point defeat in the finals of the Battle 4 Atlantis that was one of the most lopsided losses of coach Teri Moren’s tenure. It was also the second time in a matter of weeks that the team couldn’t score 50 points, but that same IU team also has impressive wins against a pair of ranked opponents (Stanford and Baylor) this season.
Their performance on Sunday resembled those victories, even without starting guard Sydney Parrish, who is expected to miss several weeks with a knee injury she suffered in the Bahamas.
Indiana pulled away from Maine with a 15-2 run early in the third quarter and set a season-high with 11 made 3-pointers. The Bears never cut the lead under 20 points in the fourth quarter.
Indiana women’s basketball offense makes all the right moves
Indiana starting point guard Chloe Moore-McNeil knew her team needed a strong effort with Parrish out. She scored 15 of her season-high 22 points in the first half while going 6 of 6 from the field with three made 3-pointers.
It was as aggressive as she’s been offensively all season long, but everything came in the flow of the offense. The Hoosiers looked more comfortable swinging the ball around and running their sets against Maine with season-high 25 assists on 30 field goals.
Yarden Garzon and Shay Ciezki each had seven assists while IU committed a season-low nine turnovers. It was the first time the Hoosiers had less than 10 turnovers in a single game since a win over Oklahoma (four turnovers) in the NCAA tournament last year.
Indiana forward Lilly Meister was a big beneficiary of that ball movement with 14 of her 18 points in the second half. Most of those buckets were open looks at the rim while coming off a pick-and-roll and cutting to the basket.
Indiana women’s basketball is a dangerous team when its shots are falling
IU had a disastrous shooting performance to close out the Battle 4 Atlantis. The Hoosiers shot 4 of 26 from 3-point range (15.4%) and that was their worst 3-point shooting performance as a team since a 2023 win over Northwestern (13.6%).
The Hoosiers came into Sunday’s game shooting just 27.4% from the outside and all their guards were shooting a worse percentage than last year.
It resulted in some ugly offensive numbers in the first month of the season for a team that just last year had the best 3-point shooting percentage (39.6%) in the country. The Hoosiers got into an early rhythm against Maine by going 5 of 7 in the first quarter and finished the game 11 of 22. They are going to need more hot shooting performances like that in the weeks to come if they hope to be competitive in the Big Ten.
Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here.
